1) The history and evolution of workforce management (WFM) began with the origins of organized labor through guilds and unions, then progressed through the industrial age, Great Depression, world wars, and information age with advances in technology and management practices. 2) Early WFM focused on productivity and piecework, evolving to consider worker psychology and organizations behavior through studies like the Hawthorne Experiments. 3) The computer age from the 1950s onward drove automation and complexity of WFM systems, beginning with payroll and moving to integrated HR, scheduling, absence planning and workforce planning systems. 4) Future WFM will continue replacing systems regularly to optimize employee scheduling and drive down labor costs through breakthroughs like

1. Workforce Management
Fundamentals Series
The History and Evolution of WFM
Scott Brown
President, Sability
Rob Leonard
Chief Operating Officer, Sability

2. Origins of Organized Labor
• Humankind pools
resources to produce goods
and services.
• Set the stage of how we
think about organizing our
labor

3. Early Workforce Management
• Apprentice to journeyman
• Craftsmen formed guilds
• Regulation and standardization follow
• Excellence = certification

4. Industrial Age
• Industrial Age ushers in
sweeping changes
• Mass employment
• Focus on productivity
• Fair and safe working
conditions

5. Birth of Modern Labor Market
• Industrialization makes guilds obsolete
• Creates demand for new organizational
methods
• Parallel organizations evolved slowly
• Workers dissatisfaction rampant by late 1800s
• First labor union formed by NCR employees
• Unions now represent less than 2% of the
workforce

6. Origin of WFM as a science
• Fredrick Taylor’s Shop Management published
in 1903
• Asserts that humans are production units,
analogous to machines
• How-to guide regarded by unions as exploitive
• Taylor’s practices were subject of
Congressional hearings

7. Division of Work Emerges
• Henry Fayol introduced the theory in 1918
• Work is:
– Broken down into tasks
– Grouped into functions
– Performed by workers
with specialized skills

8. Shedding Light on Productivity
• Experiments begin in 1924 to explore the link
between illumination and productivity
• Hawthorne Experiments prove that both
higher and lower illumination deliver higher
productivity
• Western Electric & Harvard University
continue experiments until 1932
• Conclusion of study: Productivity boosts are
result of focus on workers

9. Organization Behavior is Born
• Psychology is significant factor in productivity
• Sets tone of Harvard Business School’s
management philosophy
• Dominates for next century
• Results still pertinent

10. World War I Impact
• Increase in government
bureaucracies
• Department of Labor is
founded
• Continued focus on
productivity and output

11. Depression-Era Legislation
• Davis-Bacon
• Norris-LaGuardia
• National Industrial Recovery Act
• Wagner
• Welsh-Healey
• Fair Labor Standards Act

12. World War II Impact
• Manpower shortages necessitate government to
keep prices artificially low
• Labor policy through presidential decree
• Taft-Hartley allows state to pass “right to work”
laws
• Worldwide, legislation is passed
• Management sciences provide incremental
productivity gains

13. Information Age
• The Information Age dates from the 1950s
• Applying technology to business applications
• How do we manage complexity?

14. Productivity is the Driving Force
• Commercial use of computers begin in 1950s
• IBM estimated world market at 5 computers
• Current estimates of PCs is 1.4 billion
• First applications related to WFM were payroll
• COBOL & FORTRAN emerge
• Automation & complexity outstrip
programming ability

15. Systems Still Challenged
• Computer problems not all hardware-based
• Birth of information as a science
• First relational database introduced in 1978 by
Relational Software (Oracle)
• 1985: Intel co-founded Gordon Moore
predicts integrated complexity will double
every 18 to 24 months
• He’s right!

16. The Holy Trinity
• Increasing computer power, relational
databases, & GUIs lead to:
– Client-Server Architecture
– Unmatched applications champion: PeopleSoft
– First HR software shakeout

17. Why Should I Care?
• Patterns have emerged
• Unless recognized and managed, they will be
problematic in all stages:
– Implementing
– Upgrading
– Launching
– Maintaining

18. The Shift to the Web
• Causes global stampede
– Virtually no installation
– No version mismatches
between client server
components
– Ubiquitous
– Invented by Al Gore!

19. The Shift to the Web
• Disruptive technology
• Drivers
– Cost
– Infrastructure
• Challenges
– Stateless
– Though graphically rich, provides less true
functionality than early Green Screen systems

20. Acquisitions spike
• Side effect of (disruptive) technology boom
• Acquisitions, while a cause of customer
concern, result in:
– A dispersion of talent
– The creation of software alternatives
– Increased competition
– Customers benefit long-term

21. WFM Systems
• WFM systems come into being
• Evolution from “time clock” applications
• Integration with HR
• Push forward into
– Scheduling
– Absence Planning
– Workforce Planning
• Future of WFM

22. Successful Long-Term Systems Strategy
• Expect to replace systems regularly
• Employee schedule optimization – a WFM
breakthrough – drives labor costs down in
large organizations
• Meta-patterns: don’t be doomed to repeat
them

23. Thank You
scott.brown@sability.com
twitter: #scottabrown
#sability